


Untitled Thing

by MarionMinette, tpmbouquins



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: M/M, like at all, my friend got offended, she didn't agree, so instead of yelling at me (maybe she did yell a little) she wrote a sequel to my ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 11:38:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17385773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarionMinette/pseuds/MarionMinette, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tpmbouquins/pseuds/tpmbouquins
Summary: Armie answers Tim's question and then realize how wrong he was.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One day, one innocent person wrote a ficlet on tumblr (that's me). Because she was so innocent, she sent her ficlet to her dear friend, because it was matching the topic of their conversation. And then...
> 
> ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.
> 
> Well sort of. The dear friend got offended. She didn't agree with the ficlet. Like not at all. So she decided to write a fix-it for it (that would be chapter II of this Untitled Thing).
> 
> What you're about to read is the result of all of this.
> 
> Side note : nothing is beta'd and we're both French. If your eyes are bleeding while reading... sorry ? Do you want some croissants to forgive us ?

In the course of the last days of shooting, it had felt like I had spent more time with Timmy in my arms than anything else. Both on and off camera. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had wished Luca had been there with his one lens thing when we had said goodbye to each other — because I had never felt more Oliver than at that moment.

“How much time do you need ?” Timmy’s face was pressed against my chest, his voice muffled by the fabric of my shirt. I didn’t know how I was supposed to let him go. That kind of strength had never been in me. It had turned out, it had always been. It was only buried and guarded, waiting for him.

I had thought about my daughter first. Then about my - at the time - unborn child. I had thought about my wife I’ve loved, still love, and our friends and family and our business and all the aspects of my life so tangled-up in hers I didn’t know what was mine anymore. What was _me_. Then I thought about my parents. I shouldn’t have cared. I knew I shouldn’t. I did. Even if I was tired of _negotiating_ for their support. I had almost lost them once. Did it make me a bad person if I didn’t want to lose them forever ? Because I would have. I will. There was no way they could have accepted this. Me, in these terms. That was the one deal they wouldn’t have signed. Not back then, not now, not ever.

“Twenty years ?” I had said then, more like a plea than an answer. I knew I was asking for the impossible. I also knew that if only two people could do it, these two people would have to be us.

“Twenty… fuck.” The grip had tightened on both sides. “That’s like… my _whole_ life.”

“You need them too.” Even if I didn’t see his face, I had known Timmy was frowning, open mouth ready to protest. “Believe me… You will.”

I hadn’t been sure of much at that point but I had been sure of that at least. It had been one of the very few things I had felt certain about after six weeks of watching this kid, a raw bundle of talent and charm doing his thing. There was a path out there, waiting for Timothée Chalamet. A journey so bright, I wouldn’t have dared standing in the way. It… _I_ would have been too much, too soon, too heavy, and the kid deserved to walk freely. I had been right. He had wanted and needed to do so at some point.

“Timmy ?”

He had lifted his chin, his eyes wide open, trusting and unguarded as he had looked at me. Something had broken in both of our hearts. But the sound made by the fall of the remaining pieces had been incredibly soft, whispered in unison and echoing for each other in both of our bodies.

“Don’t waste these twenty years waiting, okay ? Live them a little for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I leave you with her now. Don't worry, she's the nice one of our duo.


	2. The letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armie writes a letter to Hops and Ford

11am.  
Slightly high Armie writes his letter. 

 

__________________

 

For both of you,

 

There is no such thing as the “right” decision. As I watch you playing in the garden, I know for sure that whatever decision I take will make you both suffer at some point in your lives. I owe it to you, and to your mother, to be honest with you and tell you the truth. Unfortunately, right now you are out in the garden playing prince and princess and cannot even begin to comprehend whatever I put down in this letter. Despite everything, I do not want you ever to think that your presence in my life did not enter into my decision, that my decision was not dictated by your very existence. And one day, when you are both old enough to understand each word I have written, I will give you this letter, in the hope that you will never be in any doubt as to the fact that at this precise moment, you are the first ones I would have wanted to tell about my decision.

It may be that when you are reading this sentence, you feel only hatred for me, perhaps you have not spoken to me in years. If that is the case, I have only one thing to ask of you: that you read this letter as if it had been written by a stranger, someone you have never met, like a blog post chanced upon at 3 am in the morning when you are trying to avoid your homework and looking for any excuse to put it off. Take a step back and do not judge me until you have read the letter all the way through right up to the very last full stop.  
If, on the other hand, things are good between us, between you and your mother and between your mother and me (by that I mean if we are just as fucked up, just as happy and just as miserable as most of the other families you know) then consider this to be the simplest and most comprehensive explanation that you can ever hope to get of our family.

I need you to know that I have always loved your mother. She blew me away from the very moment she came into my life and she still does. And today, as I am preparing to reveal the truth to her and break our up family, nothing about my love for her has changed. I consider myself very lucky to have been on the receiving end of her love and trust. To this day, I believe that she is the best mother I could possibly have chosen for you. She is, and always will be, stunning and awesome in every possible way. She boosted my self-esteem when I was feeling insecure, made me laugh when I was crying, gave me a feeling of emotional security that I had never known before meeting her.

But then he came along. And I could never for one instant have foreseen or begun to imagine how I would feel. I would never have believed that I, a man who could not be more straightforward and basic if he tried, would be moved by a love so pure that even the finest literature would struggle to do it justice. I still do not understand whatever happened that summer in Italy. Everything in me changed, I felt lighter, my gravity shifted when he appeared on the scene. I tried to fight, I tried to fight it with all my might. But by the time you read this letter, you will probably have learnt that fighting against such forces is impossible. Even today I still find it all overwhelming and would never be pretentious enough to say that I totally understand the bond that unites us.

Over and above the love, which I do not understand and cannot explain, I owe you both the honest truth. At the end of that first summer, I had no idea how to go back to my life without him in it. I was a married man with a very young daughter and a son on the way, how could I  
turn my back on that life? It was then that I made the selfish mistake of asking him to wait for me for twenty years. He never replied, but because of the bond we share, I know exactly how he reacted to my request: he told himself that he would live his life, that he would not really wait for me even though deep down he would wait and if our love has taught me anything, it is that whatever he does, he will wait and he will suffer. And me, I would suffer and tell your mother and you, my children, a pack of lies. I know that it is selfish, but I wanted to keep my parents close to me and for them to continue to accept me within the family. Selflessly, I wanted to preserve you from scandal and from being children of divorced parents. I so wanted you to have the best possible start in life, with your parents living under one roof together, in love with each other, looking after you, watching you every day as you grew, sharing that with your mother and hiding the other part of me.

That was three years ago now and I am clinging on to my plan, body and soul, despite the ever-growing sense of guilt I feel every day. It is taking over my relationship with your mother and indeed my life. Over the course of the last three years I have done a lot of thinking, about what being a good father and a good husband means. Leaving my parents out of it and just thinking about you and your mother, my plan makes no sense. What I am offering you is a life full of lies where you only half-know your father, where your mother loves a man who is deceiving her when he looks her in the eyes and tells her he loves her. I cannot be that man any more, I do not want to be that man any more. What will become of our family when, in seventeen years' time, I get out of bed one day and tell you all that I am leaving to start a new life with another man, another love?  
You will have every right to hate me, your mother will ask me how long ago I started feeling that way, a legitimate question, and I will not be able to lie to her. And when I imagine you as adults, I also imagine all the questions you will ask me when I make my announcement and what sort of role model that will make me for you. A father who deceived his family for twenty years because he did not have the courage to be himself? My plan was destined to fail from the outset.

If there is one thing I must teach you about life, it is this: do not ever be afraid of being yourselves. Even if being yourself means going against everything you have been taught, against the mores of the society in which we live. Just be free at all costs to accept yourselves as you are and never judge the people who have also made the same choice. Remember that no-one else can live your lives for you. Only you. Other people will come and go from your lives, some will always be around, but none of them will ever live every second of every day in your hearts and minds. You are the only ones who should be making choices about your lives. Always be kind to others and always explain your choices to those who love you and who you hold in high esteem, but let the way you live your lives be down to you and only you. It takes courage, the risks involved are terrifying, but ultimately, it is the biggest gift you could ever give yourselves.

I am looking at you out in the garden, still playing, with your mother watching over you (did I tell you she was the best mother I could ever have given you?) and I would like to scream out to you that his love, far from diminishing my love for you, has boosted the love I feel for you and your mother. He has boosted every kind of love I have ever felt at any point in my whole life. His light has never eclipsed yours, he has made my whole world so much brighter, his light glances off onto you in the most amazing way.  
I could never love you any less because of him, my love will be enhanced thanks to him. He has opened up to me a wealth of immeasurable possibilities in my relationships with others. His very existence has taught me to cherish every little smile on the three of your faces, every little laugh and increased my desire to chase away all of your tears, however small.  
Everything I knew, I have unlearnt to learn everything again, my own truth is now manifold, gaining myriad nuances I had previously neither felt nor considered.

And despite my lack of experience of life, I can only hope that you, too, will one day know that kind of love. A love that will make you grow, that will give you everything without taking anything in return.

This letter is nearly at an end and the time for me to admit everything to your mother is drawing nearer, minute by minute. I want you to know that my most heartfelt wish is to find the words that will ease her suffering as much as possible, to dry your tears when you learn the news. But I now know that such sadness is necessary and that it is even more proof of the happiness the four of us have had together as a family. That your tears will be proof that the family unit your mother and I built up is based on love and security. I would love it if at the age you are now, as I write you this letter, you could really understand it when I say that your home on this planet cannot be found at a specific set of coordinates, but that it will always be your mother and me, wherever we may be, whatever we may be doing, we will always be your haven, your home. Together or separately.

And I so wish the three of you could explore my heart and mind to feel all the love I carry, and will always carry, for you. Because my love for you is, now and forever, absolute.

**Author's Note:**

> I leave you with her now. Don't worry, she's the nice one of our duo.


End file.
